Before we integrated the Facebook comments on the blog itself, old MJ smothered our collective enthusiasm RE: Falkenrath Marauders with his stoic, Value RUG-Pod driven pragmatism on FB proper…

One might say that the man has a point.

Now on the subject of MJ — and even the echo of Demigod of Revenge dredged up during the Falkenrath Marauders discussion — I got to thinking about a bit of an older(er) school situation. Consider this deck, which Jacob used to make Top 8 of Grand Prix Seattle/Tacoma a couple of years back:

Now everyone knows that Michael won the 2008 US National Championships with a Demigod of Revenge deck, but today’s backwards-winking You Make the Play posits playing his Five-color Blood deck against the hellacious Spirit Avatars.

The Situation:Your opponent is playing a B/R Blightning Beatdown deck. The action has been brutal, but you stabilized by blowing up all his guys with Jund Charm, up until he got in there with a Demigod of Revenge.

Lucky ducky, you had your Cruel Ultimatum to take care of it, and are now sitting pretty pretty.

7 comments ↓

i would let the trigger go on the stack, then counter it and bounce the ghitu. then i would exile his graveyard with the trigger still on the stack to remove both demigods from the game. then proceed to cruel him and attack for the win. pretty simple

@commador01 I think you might be mistaken. The Jund Charms and Cruel Ultimatum are in the GY. Your hand is just Cryptic and Bit Blast.

Personally, I would wait for him to declare attackers then just Bit Blast one of the Demigods. Sure, you go to 1, but he has no cards and you get a cascade and a draw step to win. That gives you a ton of outs, since you basically only need to find 3 damage, and you still have the Cryptic in case you don’t draw one.

I’m pretty sure Cryptic to tap and bounce is the play. It’s true you might be able to win if you Blast this turn and let yourself go to 1, but if you just stay at 6 his only winning draw is Anathemancer. He can’t recast Demigod because you’ll have Blast and he’ll be dead to Bloodbraid, and worst case scenario you can Blast your Bloodbraid to try and hit a Cryptic to counter an Anathemancer.

Basically, in this route, he has 4 outs to win (Anathemancer, which you have a small chance to counter) versus the potentially 16 non-kills you could hit off Blast (4 Leech, 3 Sygg, 3 Cryptic, 4 Pulse, 2 Fallout). You still have a decent shot and winning, but being at 1 with a Cryptic in hand that has to tap Demigod is scary versus a burn deck.

All of this is in addition to the removal for Bloodbraid scenario, which would prolong the game. And even if he draws something relevant, there’s always the chance he just slams Demigod again.

Culmination of a lot of the tech I have been working on for Standard. No Sylvan Caryatids is a nod to Patrick Chapin. Nothing but two-for-ones. Wish I could have gotten this in the hands of a good pilot for the GP but just finished it.

I had a day off this weekend from shooting Supernatural, and I was walking around downtown Vancouver on Saturday, sampling all the artisan coffee I could get my throat around. At one point I saw a pair of guys walking towards me wearing gamer shirts. Black short-sleeved, one Halo and one Call of…